Small Change 03: Half A Crown

by Jo Walton

  The balls were all pretty much the same. The rooms were decorated in some way supposed to be thrilling and novel, which never managed to carry it off properly. We’d be formally greeted by the nominal hostess—the deb—and her mother. Then we’d go off to the cloakroom and check our faces and our hair. Usually there’d be a maid there to help with hair, and pin up any hems that had come loose or anything like that. Lady Avril Bellamy once famously trod on her hem dancing and her dress tore right up to her thigh, and the cloakroom maid managed to tack it back up so she kept on dancing all evening and eventually married a marquis. It just goes to show, Nanny said when she told us this story, though she didn’t go on to say what it showed. I hope Lady Avril had tipped the cloakroom maid pretty well for that, is all I can say. I always made sure to take half crowns to tip them. It must have been a horrible job. Early on the cloakrooms would be full of debs chattering away nineteen to the dozen, all trying to get the maid’s attention. But we could go into the cloakroom at any time, as of course the toilets were in there, and the poor maid often looked frightfully bored if I popped in mid-evening.

  After the cloakroom visit we had to go back to the ballroom, where there would be a series of numbered dances, interrupted by one break for refreshments mid-evening, usually at about eleven o’clock. These things went on until one o’clock at least, and later in the season we’d be expected to go to one every night. We were being eased in at the shallow end by going to one or two a week before we were presented.

  The dances were grim. There was usually a band butchering the tunes in the corner, though I did go to one ball where they spelled them with a gramophone. You had to find partners for at least some of the dances, and for the refreshments as well, or the evening, for you anyway, was considered a failure. You could be considered a failure too, for that matter. If you spent the evening sitting by your chaperone or hiding in the cloakroom people started calling you a wallflower, and once you got a name as one it was hard to lose it. To succeed as a deb, you had to be able to get men to dance with you. They had to ask you, of course; you couldn’t possibly ask them even if they were standing right there. Viola Larkin supposedly asked a man to dance once, a generation ago, and look what happened to her.

  Usually, Betsy and I were pretty good at finding partners. We could dance fairly well, because years and years of lessons do eventually pay off. We were also a good team, passing off partners to each other, and generally looking after each other when we weren’t dancing, rather than hanging around with Mrs. Maynard, who generally sat against the wall with some of the other chaperones, knitting and talking to her friends. We’d been told in Switzerland that staying with your mother was one of the ways to keep yourself a wallflower, and we’d soon been able to observe this for ourselves. We were lucky that there were two of us. There were some other pairs of sisters or cousins or friends being brought out together, and we always had the advantage. Some of the singleton girls had come up from the country and knew absolutely nobody. Their families were county gentry and they were utterly naïve. If they hadn’t been to school or been finished, and some of them hadn’t, then they’d never met strangers in their lives, and now they were expected to deal with the haut monde without any training at all. There was one girl we met in the cloakroom of a ball crying her eyes out who had spent pretty much her whole life up to that point doing nothing but breeding dogs and riding to hounds. Mary Carron said (bitchily, but it made us laugh) that it would have been kinder to have left her on her pony and let her marry a groom.

  Of course, while you had to be able to get men to dance with you, you weren’t supposed to be too friendly with them. You weren’t supposed to be “fast,” and heaven help you if a rumor got around that you weren’t a virgin. You weren’t even supposed to have more than two, or at absolute most three, dances with the same man unless you were engaged. You could take refreshments with them, but you weren’t supposed to leave the ballroom otherwise. We heard stories about people sneaking off to nightclubs with men and coming back before the end of the ball without their mothers noticing, but if anyone really did and it had been found out, it would have been a total scandal. I think all those stories were from the twenties and thirties when things were more relaxed. (They say Unity Mitford once brought a ferret to a ball hidden in her handbag.) In 1960 we were far more formal and such goings-on were quite beyond the pale. Debs certainly did go to nightclubs, but they didn’t sneak out of balls to go to them without their chaperone knowing where they were, unless they wanted to ruin their reputations.

  Betsy’s broken arm caused a sensation as soon as we arrived. Everyone wanted to commiserate with her and hear all about it, all the girls at least. Libby Mitchell—another Elizabeth, a very pretty and popular deb, our hostess—spent at least ten minutes asking her about it, with the line building up behind. Of course, Betsy couldn’t really be expected to dance, and either I’d only been dancing at balls before because men put up with me to dance with Betsy, or everyone thought I’d naturally want to keep her company. I had my dances of obligation with two of the three young men from dinner, neither of them anyone I cared two pins about. The third, Tommy Charteris, said he’d take me down for refreshments instead. There was no sign of Sir Alan, rather to my relief. It had occurred to me that it was going to be hard to pretend to like him while avoiding being alone with him. His friend Sir Mortimer was there, dancing with all the more sophisticated and prettiest debutantes. He opened the ball with Libby Mitchell, who was looking absolutely radiant. He looked very light-footed for such a fat man.

  Tommy Charteris did show up to take me down to supper, which was nice, as he was the heir of a marquis, and after all he couldn’t help the buck teeth. Once I was sitting down and had my champagne and ice cream he buggered off and talked cricket with Jumbo Wilson, ignoring me entirely. Betsy was on the other side of the room with one of the Farnham twins. One of the chaperones, seeing me there alone, came up to me. She was gray haired and wearing a rather splendid diamond waterfall on a mauve and lace ball dress in the style of about ten years before. “Do you mind if I sit here and join you while I eat this ice?”

  “Not at all,” I said. “I’m rather glad to have someone to talk to, as the boy who brought me down would rather talk to his old school friend than to me.”

  She gave them a rapid glance. “Oh, young Charteris? My grandson was at Harrow with him and he tells me he plays for the other team.” Seeing I didn’t follow this expression, which indeed confused me entirely, she glossed this. “He prefers men to girls. Well, a lot of men do, I suppose, but I mean in bed, not just to talk to in the ballroom.”

  I looked sideways at Tommy, who wasn’t five feet from us in the crowded room, but he hadn’t heard because of the general noise level caused by everyone braying at each other. He didn’t look any different from the way he had at dinner or when I’d taken his arm to let him bring me down to the supper room. It was hard to imagine him and Jumbo doing whatever it was men did together. They looked so ordinary, bellowing away about England’s chances in the Ashes. I knew what girls did together, of course, nobody could go to Arlinghurst without finding that out. Men, though, were still pretty much a mystery to me. I’d had my chances in Switzerland, but unlike Betsy I’d not taken advantage of them.

  “You’re Mrs. Maynard’s protégé, aren’t you?” she went on. “I’m Lady Malcolm, Heidi Harnesty’s great-aunt. My husband and I are here with Heidi tonight because my niece, her mother, is feeling a little under the weather.”

  “So early in the season?” I asked.

  Lady Malcolm laughed loudly, causing one or two people to look over at us and then away. “I suppose it does grow a little wearing,” she said. “So you’re bored with all this tiswas? Heidi is thoroughly enjoying all the attention, the little beast.”

  “Lady Heidi’s very popular,” I said, truthfully. She was one of the debs whose picture was always appearing in the papers. She was to be presented with us the following week.

  Lady Malco
lm snorted. “What a waste of time this all is. I came out in 1910, and all this nonsense has hardly changed a bit. Pairing up, two by two, checking the bloodlines. Just like breeding livestock, when you think about it. But you seem a sensible little thing. What’s your name?”

  “Elvira Royston,” I said.

  “Oh, of course. I’ve heard of you. Your uncle is something in the Gestapo, the Watch that is, Bertie always calls it that and I always pick up his bad habits. Sorry, my dear.”

  “That’s quite all right,” I said, politely, though I was seething. I always hated it when people called the Watch the Gestapo. “My uncle is Watch Commander, and my father was a policeman, and I suppose you think I’m here under false pretenses, not having the right ancestors.”

  “Nothing of the kind,” she brayed. “Our class has always renewed itself with bringing in new blood. Good for you is what I say. Wasn’t your father some kind of hero? I’d positively encourage my sons to marry you, except that they’re both married already, the idiots. Would you believe I have five grandchildren?” She smiled dotingly. “They’re still a little young for you yet. But this isn’t what I was going to say. I saw you sitting here and I thought perhaps you’d do me a rather odd favor.”

  “It depends what it is,” I said, cautiously.

  “There, I said you were a sensible girl,” she said, patting me on the knee. “You’re a pretty girl, and just the type my husband always went for. You wouldn’t believe the grief he’s caused me in forty years of marriage, falling in love with lovely young brunette after lovely young brunette, but most of them meaning nothing, and in any case, always coming back. I’ve got used to it, it’s just his way. And now—he’s fifteen years older than me, which didn’t seem so much when I was eighteen and he was thirty-three, but now I’m fifty-eight and he’s seventy-three it does tell. He’s in a wheelchair these days, you know, poor Bertie. Gout. The pain makes him cry out sometimes. I wouldn’t wish it on a dog. And he has a dicky heart too, the doctors say he could just keel over at any moment.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear it,” I said.

  “No you’re not, and why should you be? Bertie’s nothing to you,” she said, and laughed unexpectedly. “But I wanted to ask you if you’d be so good as to go over and flirt with him a little, if you find yourself with any spare slots on your dance card. Flirting gallantly is all he can do now, but it does cheer him so much to do it. After all these years of making myself miserable whenever he had a new girlfriend, now I can’t see how I was ever so foolish. Now I know I don’t have much more time with him, I find I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to make him happy. What did it take from me, after all, that he loved them too? He always came home.” She dabbed at her eyes, quite unself-consciously. “So am I asking too much of you, Miss Royston, or would you be a dear good girl and allow a very old man to flirt with you for a minute or two, behind my back, so he can have something new and happy to dream about?”

  I don’t know what I would have said, but Sir Alan came up behind us before I could answer. “Cinderella,” he said. “I was hoping I’d find you here. Oh, Lady Malcolm, how lovely to see you. And how is Lord Malcolm?”

  “As well as can be expected,” Lady Malcolm said. “I’ll leave you with your boo, but do think about what I’ve asked,” she said, getting up and pushing her way through the crowd.

  “How are you?” Sir Alan asked.

  That was when I wished Betsy hadn’t asked me to draw him off. Naturally, I’d have replied that there was nothing wrong with me but that Betsy had a broken arm and was on the other side of the room. With a brief to be nice to him, I couldn’t, and my hesitation was immediately apparent. “I’m fine,” I said.

  It came too late; Sir Alan had decided that I wasn’t fine at all. “Would you like to dance, or are you all booked up?” he asked.

  “I’d love to dance,” I said, emphatically, putting down my champagne glass and getting up. Tommy didn’t notice, the pervert, but Betsy gave me a thumbs-up sign from across the room.

  Sir Alan took me back to the ballroom and onto the floor. The band were playing one of the newest tunes, a jaunty thing called “Way Up North in Hitlerhavn.” We started to waltz decorously enough, though he held me very close. I noticed Mrs. Maynard watching with narrowed eyes as he whirled me around. I looked back at Sir Alan, who was looking at me. I found the way his eyes were precisely at the same height as mine quite disconcerting.

  “Your ordeal wasn’t too much for you?” he asked. “I was horrified when I heard you’d been taken by the police. One hears the most awful things about them these days, they’re quite out of control, it should be looked into.”

  “Mrs. Maynard says it was fortunate I was looked after by the police,” I said.

  He laughed. “Did they ask you about me?” he asked.

  “I mentioned you. I thought perhaps the title might impress them, but it didn’t seem to. I had more luck mentioning my uncle.”

  “Your uncle?” he asked. “I thought you were an orphan.”

  “I believe Mrs. Maynard told your mother all about my family,” I said, quite sharply, because I was sure he knew.

  “Oh, but I never listen to a word my mother says,” he said, charmingly, steering me quite expertly around Mary Carron and a great clumping Guards officer.

  “My uncle is Watch Commander Carmichael,” I said.

  Sir Alan missed a step, so it must actually have been a surprise to him. “Good gracious,” he said, quite lightly, but his expression was very hard to read. “It seems I have been worrying about you needlessly. They surely wouldn’t have held on to someone with such highly placed relatives.”

  “No,” I said, with some satisfaction.

  14

  As the Caravan Club enclosed them, Carmichael couldn’t help wishing that he were anywhere else. The air was blue with smoke. The band were playing the inevitable Cole Porter. The walls were hung with red fabric held in place with golden cords, meant to evoke tents, Morocco, and the mysterious world of the Arabian Nights. Curtains were drawn across most of the alcoves, which offered a certain degree of privacy, but sounds escaped and were not quite drowned by the band. A few couples, all men, were shuffling around the tiny dance floor. Others clustered at the bar. Some were dressed as hideous parodies of women, others were disguised so well Carmichael would hardly have guessed they were men, save for their hands. Most were dressed in ordinary male clothes, respectable enough in their hats and waistcoats, if not for the look in their eyes. Where did they go the rest of the time? Carmichael wondered. Could these men who simpered on Saturday night in the club spend their daily lives as ticket-sellers on the railway, office clerks, shopkeepers, schoolteachers, policemen, like everyone else? Some of them, he knew, would be married. Two men, having negotiated at the bar, went off into one of the alcoves and drew the curtains across. Would their wives, smelling the cat-house perfume on their collars, suspect infidelity and leap to the wrong conclusions? Could they have any lives outside this room, the only place he ever saw them, and could they have imagined that he did?

  It wasn’t that Carmichael didn’t want to make Jack happy. He did. It was just so difficult. Once, when they had been in the army, they had dreamed of having a flat together in privacy where they could close the door to everyone else. They might appear as master and man before the world, but in their own space they would just be Jack and P. A. In their dreams, that had seemed enough, and to Carmichael it was still enough. He was still thankful for the miracle that had brought him Jack. He regretted that they couldn’t go out like other people. He would have liked to take Jack to good restaurants, and to Elvira’s dinner, to be open before the world like the couples he saw holding hands as they walked down the street on a warm summer evening. But if he couldn’t have that, he didn’t want this tawdry alternative, the half-life of the bars and clubs where homosexuals gathered furtively, almost all of them speaking mincingly and miming effeminacy in their every gesture. It set his teeth on edge. He didn’t identi
fy with them; indeed they repelled him utterly. He would have avoided them even if it had been safe to associate with them. As it was, he would have shunned them like lepers, if not for Jack.

  Jack greeted friends and made for the bar, Carmichael staying close behind. Jack wanted to go to Greece and Turkey and he had to deny him. Jack wanted their life to be more open as it became ever more closed. Jack wanted fun and excitement, and the world denied him much of it and Carmichael most of the rest. The Caravan Club, long established and as safe as any such establishment could be, was their compromise. Carmichael came with Jack because otherwise Jack would come alone, as he sometimes did when Carmichael had to work long hours. “I was only having a drink with my friends. I can’t sit at home waiting for you every minute with no knowing when you’re going to deign to turn up,” Jack would say, and every time Carmichael’s gorge rose at the thought that Jack might have gone off into the alcoves for a tryst with some of those “friends.” He loved Jack, and he trusted him, but Jack felt none of Carmichael’s distaste; he felt he belonged among the patrons of the club.

  Jack ordered drinks, a cocktail for himself and a whisky and soda for Carmichael, as usual. “Bottoms up!” Jack said, and the barman laughed shrilly, though surely the joke must have worn as thin for him as it had for Carmichael, who sipped his whisky morosely. If they were raided, he thought, it would be best not to run but to hold on to Jack and go out of the front and simply overawe the police presence there with his card. He was almost sure it would work. The Watch were feared even by the Metropolitan Police, usually, until it got to high levels. Penn-Barkis—he didn’t want to think about Penn-Barkis, so he downed his whisky and bought another.